A wheelie bad day

There’s nothing quite like cycling a long distance to a town, only to be confronted with a sign at the municipal campground that says ‘no tents’ – even though there’s lots of space for tents and all the facilities to boot and no suggestion of where tenters might be welcomed….

This was our introduction to Ashland, Wisconsin. And then our mood got a little worse when Andrew inspected his back rim to try and figure out where a strange thumping noise was coming from and discovered the rim had cracked inside. What a disappointment in our Bontrager Maverick rim. We only bought it 2,000 miles ago.

By contrast, our other rims (Alex and Alessa Apollo brands), which we bought in Iran are still going strong after some 16,000 miles.

Harrrumph.

Totally fed up, we camped anyway on the outskirts of the ‘no tenting’ campground and happily found a decent bike shop the next day where we shelled out $100 for a new Sun Rhyno rim. Fingers crossed this one will get us to the east coast….

Now we are just waiting to hear from Bontrager and B&L Bicycles in Pullman where we bought the rim. Hopefully they can do something to make up for this unacceptable failure.

UPDATE: Both Bontrager and B&L bicycles have come back to us quickly with offers of a refund. The rim shouldn’t have failed but it’s nice to know there’s good customer service behind the product. Thanks folks!